PROFESSOR'S THOUGHTS

This publication is an example of how some of the changes I addressed in the first section are very successful and how they are adapting to them. Dr. Wilson Lowery, professor in journalism said, “Some news orgs have offered some pay for stories. The news sites Pro Publica and Global Post are excellent national examples of online news orgs that are successfully combining staff stories with the work of stringers and other non-journalist "citizen" reporters.” The content on the website is about various community and national issues. The lesson I learned from Dr. Lowery was that, “Journalists realize increasingly that non-journalists will have an increasingly important say in how news is produced.” This is very important because it showcases that one change that citizen journalism is having is not only on editing, but on how news is produced in general.
The website Pro Publica has on its page, “We support each story we publish with an active and aggressive communications effort of our own, including regularly contacting reporters, editors and bloggers, encouraging them to follow-up on our reporting, and to link to our site and our work.” This showcases the fact that they are acknowledging citizen journalists and opening their work to their site. The content on the site ranges from Gas Drilling, and Stimulus which are things that would affect all citizens. This is one progressive step that the publication is making to include the citizens because it includes them in the news process, which I feel is most important. Dr. Lowery does state that there is an issue of editing this work which is not done by professional journalists. He says that “Davidsonnews.net” is an example of a community news website that is not as successful and economically is not coping with the changes in editing. Dr. Lowery said that from a financial standpoint it is hoped that citizen hyperlocal efforts will bring ad revenue because the ads would target a smaller community which would be beneficial. Overall, I think this publication looks good because it is coping with the changes of editing. One of my main concerns was about the errors that would be made, but it seems as though the percentage of paid staff would handle that problem. The paid staff is likely to be responsible for stories, and some minor editing. Many people don’t realize the rise in citizen journalism most recently. This is something that I feel newspapers are going to have to embrace more. For example, Dr. Lowery touched on this as well, “Big news orgs no longer have a monopoly on gathering and producing news, so partnerships with citizens seem a good way to go,” said Dr. Lowery. He is very knowledgeable about the concept of citizen journalism and how it is affected editing. My personal opinions were in section 1, and in the second post we studied an example of an already established good and bad citizen journalism sites. Lastly, I analyzed the effectiveness of the publication and not how it was changing, but how it was embracing the change.
http://davidsonnews.net/about/
http://www.propublica.org/